Web based family history software

Question Legacy location issues

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3 years 7 months ago #1 by RottenSod
Legacy location issues was created by RottenSod
Hi.

I notice there is a "CustomTagsLegacy.php" module under development. Is this anywhere near completion? How can I implement it? Will it help with the below problem?

At the moment I have over 17,500 locations (that I am trying to reduce drastically) and I can't seem to import the Lat/Lon values into webtrees. If I export as GEDCOM 5.1.1 I don't get any co-ordinate data. If I export as a Legacy file I get this:

0 _PLAC_DEFN
1 PLAC Leicester, Leicestershire, England
2 ABBR Leicester, Leicestershire, England
2 MAP
3 LATI N52.6333333333333
3 LONG W1.13333333333333
2 _VERI Y
0 _PLAC_DEFN
1 PLAC Belper, Derbyshire, England
2 ABBR Belper, Derbyshire, England
2 MAP
3 LATI N53.0243897222222
3 LONG W1.47761611111111
2 _VERI Y


And I get an error from webtrees when I try to import the GEDCOM file as _PLAC_DEFN is non-standard.

Is there a way around this that I am not aware of? Is there an "app" I can run the GEDCOM through to correct it?

Cheers,

RottenSod.

The Williams Family Tree
williamsfamilytree.uk/wt

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3 years 7 months ago #2 by hermann
Replied by hermann on topic Legacy location issues
Do you know GedTools ( www.gedtool.de/ )? These are very flexible EXCEL based tools to modify a GEDCOM file.

In Legacy you have their location records using _PLAC_DEFN. Maybe it is possible to change this structure via some EXCEL operations to _LOC records based on the Vesta webtrees modules ( cissee.de/ ) and the _LOC structure of the GEDCOM Addendum ( genealogy.net/GEDCOM/ ).

Your Legacy code should become
Code:
0 @XREFnnn@ _LOC 1 NAME Leicester, Leicestershire, England 1 MAP 2 LATI N52.6333333333333 2 LONG W1.13333333333333

When this is imported to webtrees you can afterwards use a Vesta data fix procedure to change the flat structure Leicester, Leicestershire, England to hierarchical place records, i.e. own records for Leicestershire and for England and link them (Leicester is linked to Leicestershire and Leicestershire is linked to England.

Hermann
Designer of the custom module "Extended Family"

webtrees 2.1.19 (all custom modules installed, PHP 8.2, MariaDB 10.6) @ ahnen.hartenthaler.eu

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3 years 7 months ago #3 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Legacy location issues
Questions:
1) Are you planning on "round-tripping" back to Legacy?
2) Are you planning to keep everything as GEDCOM v5.5.1 compliant as possible?
3) Are you planning to use hierarchical places vs singular places?

1) If you are "round-tripping" (i.e. Going back and forth from webtrees to Legacy to webtrees you will need to maintain two separate location systems. The Legacy system is not pure GEDCOM and therefore not compatible with webtrees and probably not compatible with any other program either.

2) If you want everything to be GEDCOM 5.5.1 compliant then the _LOC that hermann is talking about is not in the GEDCOM 5.5.1 specification. It may become used widely by other programs in the future or it may not be compatible in the future! Obviously the hope by the developers of this extension is that other programs adopt the extension. However, the solution of using _LOC within webtrees that I see is slightly different than hermann's example, but what I see does seam to work as an extension to the current webtrees default "Geographical Mapping Facility".

3) I'm not sure how hermann's example works in webtrees so I can't comment on that exact GEDCOM code, BUT I started to use the Vesta option a few days ago and I have seen some real value in what I have done. What I see is that Location (_LOC) records are added to the webtrees database one for each level in the structure, Example: Three_LOC records are created for the place Leicester, Leicestershire, and England. This allows you to have mapping for each location a) England, b) Leicestershire, c) Leicester within the GEDCOM output from webtrees. The nice part of this is that you can include Text about each location telling the history of the place. The downside is that you must locate each place in the webtrees mapping facility again. (Hence my question about "round-tripping").

Again I'm not sure where the example from Hermann comes from but is is not in my GEDCOM that comes out of webtrees after using the Vesta extension.

Rebuilding you mapping locations is a little time consuming, but many of the places have already been mapped by others and they have included those coordinates in a set of files that can be loaded into webtrees. However these are not as of yet _LOC records they just update the backend database that controls the mapping feature that comes as a standard module to webtrees.

It is best to contact Richard Cissée at the website cissee.de to get a first hand understanding of what Hermann is talking about and how it compares to what I've seen using the Vesta code myself.

Ken

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3 years 7 months ago #4 by RottenSod
Replied by RottenSod on topic Legacy location issues
1) I think I will be "round-tripping", for the time being at least.

2) Although I very much appreciate Hermann's reply, I'm not comfortable with using an Excel solution.

3) As to using hierarchical places vs singular places? Is there an option? All I want is for my visitors to see the correct location on the map when they click on a place name and not "The location of this place is not known."

I am very new to webtrees and I like the format. I am, however, very used to Legacy and have multiple trees on the go. I was hoping for a quick solution to this problem which seems to have been around for quite some time.

The Williams Family Tree
williamsfamilytree.uk/wt

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3 years 7 months ago #5 by georg
Replied by georg on topic Legacy location issues
The error you get from webtrees, is it a warning or a fatal error? I.e. does it actually import the tree or not?

The problem, or least a part of it, seems to be that Legacy is not just non-standard, it is way off. If it had just assigned an XREF to the non-standard object, it would be relatively easy to import and ignore the non-standard data. Whether it would be a worthwhile feature request to Fisharebest to handle it even so, I won't judge.

It should be fairly straight forward to write a script to split your legacy file, to take the place definitions out, and then merge them back in when you return to legacy. The only caveat then, is that you cannot change place names in webtrees and keep the definition, which may or may not be a concern. This would be much easier than the translation to _LOC format, but would still require programming.

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3 years 7 months ago #6 by RottenSod
Replied by RottenSod on topic Legacy location issues

The error you get from webtrees, is it a warning or a fatal error? I.e. does it actually import the tree or not?


It's a warning. The tree is imported and is usable.

Please don't take this the wrong way Georg, but for a 69 year old person who may be suffering from the onset of dementia - nothing is easy anymore! LOL

Why is nothing "standard"? Isn't it about time GEDCOM 5.1.2 came out and fixed everything? Or 5.2, or 6.0??

The Williams Family Tree
williamsfamilytree.uk/wt

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3 years 7 months ago #7 by georg
Replied by georg on topic Legacy location issues
If the tree is imported and usable, there might not be a problem. The big follow-up question is what happens when you reexport the GEDCOM. Do you still have the place definitions?
IMO the optimal behaviour in webtrees would be to issue the warning, to say that something is not understood, but make sure that the data is not lost. From your description so far, that might just be what it does.

No, 5.5.1 is still the de facto standard, standing for almost thirty years. There is a 5.5.5 but it changes only the explanatory notes and does not add any syntax elements.
There is also a GEDCOM v6 proposal, also dating from the 1990s I think, but it is based on an entirely different logic, and will not be even partially compatible.

It is a well-known problem that many programs do not read standard GEDCOM, and even more add non-standard features which nobody else reads.

I guess the problem is that GEDCOM is just too old and too wide-spread to inspire any serious work. We can still see the data structure from the cardboard records of the Latter Day Saints in the format. The syntax may well have been state of the art in the mid-1980s, but nobody would propose anything like 20 years later. That means that the simple fixes would not be entirely satisfactory, and the cost of implementing it across the wide range of software would be high.

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3 years 7 months ago #8 by rola
Replied by rola on topic Legacy location issues

norwegian_sardines wrote:
3) I'm not sure how hermann's example works in webtrees so I can't comment on that exact GEDCOM code, BUT I started to use the Vesta option a few days ago and I have seen some real value in what I have done. What I see is that Location (_LOC) records are added to the webtrees database one for each level in the structure, Example: Three_LOC records are created for the place Leicester, Leicestershire, and England. This allows you to have mapping for each location a) England, b) Leicestershire, c) Leicester within the GEDCOM output from webtrees. The nice part of this is that you can include Text about each location telling the history of the place. The downside is that you must locate each place in the webtrees mapping facility again. (Hence my question about "round-tripping").


Vesta modules have more option where to find the coordinates. It is possible to configure the order how is searched for coordinates. (in the "Vesta Facts and events" configuration you have the "Facts and Events Tab Location Data Providers" where you cann say in which order to search for coordinates.

There are four possible sources:
1. "Vesta webtrees Location Data Provider" - this are the geographic data from webtrees - the most simple source in case you have already entered your data.
2. "Vesta Facts and events" - Iam not quite sure what this means :-)
3. "Vesta Gov4webtrees" - GOV-database - this is an external database, and you have tu use the GOV4webtrees module.
4. "Vesta Shared Places" - coordinates from shared-places.

Hermans example is for using the Vesta Shared Palce. I didnt make big tests, but it worked for me.
I am waiting for a data fixe, which cann create a shared place for every place I have in my gedcom and for an other, which will transfer the coordinates from the Geogrephic data to the shared places.

Ladislav

Ladislav

webtrees 2.0.24 + ⚶ Vesta modules (from cissee.de/ )
testing webtres 2.1.5 + ⚶ Vesta modules
on PHP Version 7.4.28

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3 years 7 months ago #9 by hermann
Replied by hermann on topic Legacy location issues
@RottenSod: The Legacy program is far away from GEDCOM standard with its location records based on _PLAC_DEFN, so I don't see a chance to have the coordinates in webtrees as long as you like to "round-tripping" between webtrees and Legacy. Because webtrees is a very tolerant program, it should be possible to import Legacy GEDCOM files to webtrees, make some changes there, and export GEDCOM back to Legacy without too much loss of information, if any.

The idea behind my example was to do a one-time conversion of the Legacy location records to _LOC location records and bring by this way the coordinates to webtrees. At the moment webtrees imports your Legacy GEDCOM file, but ignores all the unknown _PLAC_DEFN records. Using the records, you presented in your initial post, it should be possible to convert them to _LOC records, so that the coordinates are available.

Another way would be to extract the coordinates to an Excel file which can be used in the Admin menu "Map/Geographic Data/Import file".

Hermann
Designer of the custom module "Extended Family"

webtrees 2.1.19 (all custom modules installed, PHP 8.2, MariaDB 10.6) @ ahnen.hartenthaler.eu

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3 years 7 months ago #10 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Legacy location issues
Rola and Herman:

Where is the documentation that explains the 4 ways to get data. I’m not interested in using the GOV external database it does not support most of my locations because they are very specific.

My use of the_LOC only produces multiple levels of places just like the “mapping option” already part of webtrees. I don’t see a way to produce the single location multi level _LOC records that Herman produces.

Ken

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3 years 7 months ago #11 by rola
Replied by rola on topic Legacy location issues
With documentation it is a litle problem :-)

I know you are not interested in GOV - its not a must.

You have to go to Shared places, then on the bottom you cann add coordinates to the shared place. (As I wrote before - I am missing a possibility to automaticaly transfer the coordinates from the database. I hope, it will come soon.)


In the list of Shared places you cann sort by coordinates, so you cann see, which places have coordinates:


Than you have to go to the configuration page of the modul "Vesta Facts and events" and click on Location Data Provider:


Here you cann arrange yor source of coordinates, and also disable/enable other moduls (gov4webtrees for example)
.

Onthe individual page when hovering over the ?-symbol you cann see where are the coordinates from:


And this is how it looks in the raw GEDCOM:


Ladislav

Ladislav

webtrees 2.0.24 + ⚶ Vesta modules (from cissee.de/ )
testing webtres 2.1.5 + ⚶ Vesta modules
on PHP Version 7.4.28

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3 years 7 months ago - 3 years 7 months ago #12 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Legacy location issues
ROLA, The hover over the “?“ does not work on iPad. Did you see the error message I sent to you about the Media Object Page not working?

What advantage does having coordinates in the _LOC record vs in the place records that are part of webtrees?

Ken
Last edit: 3 years 7 months ago by norwegian_sardines.

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3 years 7 months ago #13 by georg
Replied by georg on topic Legacy location issues
Is Vesta and GEDCOM-L useful for other purposes than coordinates?

I do not care the slightest about coordinates, but I need a shared places concept to manage multiple historic affiliations, media files (typically photos of houses), sources, etc.
I typically work with a place hierarchy consisting of farmstead, manor, parish, benefice, county or bailiwick, and country, but it would be useful to be able to add modern day local councils as well, without disrupting the historical structure.
Furthermore, for most of the parishes I work with, there are published books on genealogy and property history, which would be most easily linked to the place. Hopefully making it easy to look up a manor and find the right book, without having to find an individual with a source registered earlier.

Would you recommend Vesta for this scenario?

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3 years 7 months ago - 3 years 7 months ago #14 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Legacy location issues
I would love to understand if Vesta supports the concept of historical place mapping. I work with farm hierarchy in Norway as well. The hierarchy charges a lot over time and the books of the farms are based on places names and locations that have very old names that don’t always have a modern name equivalent. I try to teach my readers and people who don’t know Norway history about these changes.

Just this year Norway changed the hierarchy in the area we are from. This confuses people a lot.

We would have to ask the developer about your (and my) need!

Ken
Last edit: 3 years 7 months ago by norwegian_sardines.

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3 years 7 months ago #15 by StuartG
Replied by StuartG on topic Legacy location issues
@RottenSod I have been a user of Legacy for probably over 20 years and for about 12 of those years I have been a user of PGV/webtrees. I stopped using Legacy for my data entry and changed to webtrees over 10 years ago.

The big decision for you is - Do you wish to publish your data on the web and give you and your family members the ability to easily view your family trees? If your answer is - No. Then I would stick with Legacy. If your answer is - Yes, I recommend that you persevere with evaluating webtrees.

As discussed above, moving data via Gedcom files between applications is never satisfactory. As you have experienced, Legacy has developed non-standard Gedcom tags that other apps don't understand; so has webtrees. As is usual, comparing applications is difficult. Legacy has attributes that would be good in webtrees and vice versa. I certainly would not advise using Legacy to publish a web site! For these reasons, whatever app you choose, it must become the only app you use to add and edit data.

If you want to proceed with evaluating webtrees, then @norwegian_sardines (Ken) has offered good advice with respect to LOCations:

Rebuilding you mapping locations is a little time consuming, but many of the places have already been mapped by others and they have included those coordinates in a set of files that can be loaded into webtrees. However these are not as of yet _LOC records they just update the backend database that controls the mapping feature that comes as a standard module to webtrees.


This way I think you will achieve what you want to achieve (visual mapping) without using non-standard webtrees modules. I am using the latest version of Legacy (V9.0.0.339) and they haven't yet implemented their mapping module. In fact it seems to have been abandoned. Also Legacy does not have anything like the Interactive Tree that is available in webtrees.

Stuart
webtrees 2.1.17
⚶ Vesta Modules
PHP 8.2.0
MariaDB

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3 years 7 months ago #16 by fisharebest
Replied by fisharebest on topic Legacy location issues

0 _PLAC_DEFN
1 PLAC Leicester, Leicestershire, England
2 ABBR Leicester, Leicestershire, England
2 MAP
3 LATI N52.6333333333333
3 LONG W1.13333333333333
2 _VERI Y


Is this a full/complete _PLAC_DEFN record?
Are there any other possible fields?
Is ABBR always the samde as PLAC? If not, then what purpose is it?

I ask, as it should be straightforward to read these into the "Geographic Data" in webtrees.

The records will be lost on import - due to lack of XREF - but we could capture the lat/long.

Greg Roach - greg@subaqua.co.uk - @fisharebest@phpc.social - fisharebest.webtrees.net

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3 years 7 months ago #17 by rola
Replied by rola on topic Legacy location issues

norwegian_sardines wrote: ROLA, The hover over the “?“ does not work on iPad. Did you see the error message I sent to you about the Media Object Page not working?

What advantage does having coordinates in the _LOC record vs in the place records that are part of webtrees?


I am not a developer, nor I have an iPad, so definitely I cannot help you wih this issue.

I am not talking that having coordinates in the _LOC record is better (or worse) than as a part of webtrees.

However I see some features, that might be interesting for somebody:

1. You have your coordinates in the GEDCOM file, and when you are moving/copying your data you have the coordinates automaticaly with you.
2. Its clear, that coordinates in _LOC record is a per tree value and you dont have locations from more trees in one table (what cann be a problem when you have different treees with different "place hierarchy" logic).
3. You dont need to go to the Control panel when editing coordinates and you have the same webtrees GUI.
4. Also non-admins cann edit coordinates.

One disadvantage is that adding coordinates to a shared place dont offer (yet) a possibility to finde the place on a map. Perhaps this feature will be added in the future.

Ladislav

Ladislav

webtrees 2.0.24 + ⚶ Vesta modules (from cissee.de/ )
testing webtres 2.1.5 + ⚶ Vesta modules
on PHP Version 7.4.28

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3 years 7 months ago #18 by RottenSod
Replied by RottenSod on topic Legacy location issues
I appreciate all the help and useful comments. I will certainly experiment with all your suggestions over the next day or so.

@StuartG: I agree with you. I would never contemplate creating a website with Legacy. I only use Legacy as a database and it is useful for interacting with FindMyPast, MyHeritage (who now own it), and FamilySearch. I currently use TNG for my main website. It handles _PLAC_DEFN ok and but exports a GEDCOM with this:

0 _PLAC Leicester, Leicestershire, England
1 MAP
2 LATI 52.6380635
2 LONG -1.14086166666667
2 ZOOM 0
2 PLEV 0






@fisharebest

Is this a full/complete _PLAC_DEFN record?
Are there any other possible fields?
Is ABBR always the same as PLAC? If not, then what purpose is it?


I believe this is the 'full' output. The last items are "TAGged" and "VERIfied". Neither are relevant.
As far as I am concerned, the ABBReviation is not relevant either. The notes could be handy though

0 _PLAC_DEFN
1 PLAC Leicester, , Leicestershire, England
2 ABBR Leicester, , LEI, ENG
2 NOTE Some notes ...
2 MAP
3 LATI N52.6333333333333
3 LONG W1.13333333333333
2 _VERI Y
2 _TAG


The extra commas in the place are because Legacy prefers to record locations as City, County, Sate/Prov, Country. As you are aware, this does not work for many UK addresses and locations.

The Williams Family Tree
williamsfamilytree.uk/wt

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3 years 7 months ago #19 by RottenSod
Replied by RottenSod on topic Legacy location issues
My computer crashed before I could add that the previous locations are "Master Locations"

Legacy also produces stuff like this for Addresses:

1 CHR
2 DATE 1905
2 PLAC Leicester, , Leicestershire, England
2 ADDR Some address
3 CONT 5 The Avenue
3 CONT Leicester, Leicestershire England
3 _NAME Some address
3 ADR1 5 The Avenue
3 CITY Leicester
3 STAE Leicestershire
3 CTRY England
3 MAP
4 LATI N52.6333333333333
4 LONG W1.13333333333333

Personally, I tend not to use these addresses but no doubt some people do.

The Williams Family Tree
williamsfamilytree.uk/wt

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3 years 7 months ago #20 by georg
Replied by georg on topic Legacy location issues

RottenSod wrote: 2 PLAC Leicester, , Leicestershire, England
2 ADDR Some address


ADDR is not part of PLAC here - they are both level 2. This is standard GEDCOM. There always was both ADDR and PLAC recorded independently. There is probably some meaning behind it, but ... well ... I don't use ADDR either.

I can only guess, but it seems that what is recorded under the place definitions is tags that could go directly under any PLAC tag, and that Legacy uses just the PLAC contents to match a place with its definition. Quite likely, one should prepare to digest anything that fits under PLAC.

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